Saving slide transitions

[Guest]

Making a photo album in PowerPoint 2003. For use as a slide show at a large group gathering. Want a variety of transition effects for slides. Spent considerable time assigning transition effects to nearly 200 individual photo slides. Worked fine. Saved album. Next day, returned to add a few more photo slides, assigned different transition effects to them. Saved album. Ran test. All transitions have disappeared! How can I make these transitions stay?

 

[Bill Dilworth]

If the presentation is saved, then the transitions are saved with it. It
does not sound normal for them to have vanished. Are they assigned to the
picture -- still labeled as "dissolve", "fade thru black" & etc. or did the
transition assignments disappear as well?

Is there any chance that you may have saved the file as a new name, or the
old one in a new location? Sometimes I mistakenly place a save as in a
wrong folder, did you search for recently created files?

Did you use the same version of PowerPoint on both the computer you added
the effects and the one you viewed them on? Older versions of PowerPoint
can not handle animations and transitions that were introduced in later
versions. Could this be the issue?

Post back, I'd like to hear more about this.

--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
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Making a photo album in PowerPoint 2003. For use as a slide show at a

large group gathering. Want a variety of transition effects for slides.
Spent considerable time assigning transition effects to nearly 200
individual photo slides. Worked fine. Saved album. Next day, returned to
add a few more photo slides, assigned different transition effects to them.
Saved album. Ran test. All transitions have disappeared! How can I make
these transitions stay?

 

[Guest]

Only one version of PowerPoint is involved: 2003

When I add a transition to a slide, a little gray star appears below it in the file sorter display. When I opened the presentation this morning, all the little gray stars were gone. So that must mean the assignments have disappeared, I assume

There's only been one copy of this presentation so far; I've only been doing "save" not "save as.

Do you think this is just a glitch and I should try again? It was kind of tedious adding all those transitions, so if I am doing something wrong I'd like to know before I repeat the error

Thanks

 

[Bill Dilworth]

In your situation, I would assign a few. Save it. Shut down the computer.
Restart it. And see if they disappear again. As a side note, you may want
to look into animation schemes.

What you have described is abnormal behavior. If it repeats, I'd be
interested to find out why.

--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..

Only one version of PowerPoint is involved: 2003.

When I add a transition to a slide, a little gray star appears below it in

the file sorter display. When I opened the presentation this morning, all
the little gray stars were gone. So that must mean the assignments have
disappeared, I assume.

There's only been one copy of this presentation so far; I've only been doing "save" not "save as."

Do you think this is just a glitch and I should try again? It was kind of

tedious adding all those transitions, so if I am doing something wrong I'd
like to know before I repeat the error.

 

[Guest]

Well, I assigned a few transitions, saved, and was getting ready t o reboot. Then I noticed that all the photos had shrunk somewhat, and had acquired a dark line around the photo. Not just the ones I assigned transitions to. All 200 of them. I can't imagine what I could have done to cause that. I want them to be full size, not just part of the screen. And I didn't want them to have thick black borders like they have now. Also the slides themselves have acquired a "shadow" on the right and bottom. I have no idea how these features got added, and would not know how to add them if I wanted them. I had already hit "save" before I noticed the changes. I have found I can select one photo on one slide, so that the "drag points" show up, and drag it back to full screen size. And with that one photo selected, I can go to "lines" on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and select the thinnest line, which almost makes it disappear. But when I select a bunch of slides, the "lines" choices are dimmed. So somehow there's a command that shrinks the photos and adds these lines and shadows to all 200 photos at once, but I can't figure out how to change all the photos back at once. Am I going to have to do each one of 200 slides individually? And, if I don't know how they got this way, how am I to ensure they won't do the same thing again?

Sorry this isn't what we started with, but this is getting scary.

 

[Guest]

I think I found something. To add photos to a photo album, you go to Format Photo Album. You select them from wherever. And click on "update." I just did that in another photo album, and saw that there's some language in that dialog box that says animations and etc. might be lost when "update" is clicked, and to restore them you have to go straight to Edit and Undo. (Why would the programmers do that to us?) So maybe that's what happened to my transitions. But I still have no idea how my slide design got changed. It seems to have become some kind of default, because now when I do "update" to add slides, all the slides, even the ones I've fixed manually, go back to that form. Still mystified where that design came from or how to make the one I want apply to all the slides!

 

[Bill Dilworth]

First, don't panic.

Second, let's get you set-up right. Goto the following websites and do what
they suggest:

**Do this before using PowerPoint seriously
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00034.htm

**Don't do this with PowerPoint. Seriously.
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00511.htm


Third, use an add-in to help you save sequential versions:

**Free Sequential Save Add-in by Shyam Pillai
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00494.htm

Now, you have a little more control on what's going on. Let's add another
bit:
**PPTools
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/

This will enable you to paint formatting on an object and control the
picture sizes with just a click. 200 single clicks isn't quite so bad.

--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..

Well, I assigned a few transitions, saved, and was getting ready t o

reboot. Then I noticed that all the photos had shrunk somewhat, and had
acquired a dark line around the photo. Not just the ones I assigned
transitions to. All 200 of them. I can't imagine what I could have done to
cause that. I want them to be full size, not just part of the screen. And
I didn't want them to have thick black borders like they have now. Also
the slides themselves have acquired a "shadow" on the right and bottom. I
have no idea how these features got added, and would not know how to add
them if I wanted them. I had already hit "save" before I noticed the
changes. I have found I can select one photo on one slide, so that the
"drag points" show up, and drag it back to full screen size. And with that
one photo selected, I can go to "lines" on the toolbar at the bottom of the
screen and select the thinnest line, which almost makes it disappear. But
when I select a bunch of slides, the "lines" choices are dimmed. So somehow
there's a command that shrinks the photos and adds these lines and shadows
to all 200 photos at once, but I can't figure out how to change all the
photos back at once. Am I going to have to do each one of 200 slides
individually? And, if I don't know how they got this way, how am I to
ensure they won't do the same thing again?

 

[Guest]

OK, I think I have all this set up the way you advise. Microsoft Office Document Image Writer appears in my printers list in Settings; although it isn't a real printer, it's on my computer and I assume it's a driver that will serve for the driver you advise. (The real printer--an HP T45 which I won't be using for PowerPoint--is connected the other computer on our home wireless network.) I got the PPtTools, and yes the hammer is easier that dragging.

But there are still a whole lot of clicks to get rid of that heavy black outline--the "no line" option is 3 layers down in the dialog boxes--and my hand is getting mighty sore.

Clearly, since all the slides got set that way at once, there must be some command that does them all, after they have been created. Even if said command was activated accidentally. Do you know what that command might be

Thanks again for all your help

 

[Guest]

Well, I posted a response to message #7 earlier today but it didn't come through, so maybe this discussion page only goes so many levels.

To the very helpful Mr. Dilworth

I did the things you advised. There is a printer driver (shows up in Settingsrinters and Faxes) called Microsoft Office Document Image Writer. It doesn't go with a real printer, but it's on my computer. I assume it's a printer driver that will serve the purpose. I made it the default printer for PowerPoint. (The real printer, which I do not plan to use for presentations, is an HP T45 connected to the other computer on this home wireless network.) In the PPtTools program, the hammer is very handy, and saved me some clicks

That fat dark line around each photo, however, I had to remove from each photo individually, which was a whole lot of clicking because the "no line" option is 3 layers down in the "lines" dialog box. Surely, since all my photos changed at once before, there must be some command that will change the formatting for all of them. But I haven't been able to find it. More than one *slide* can be selected at a time, of course, but the formatting seems to pertain to the photo object, not the slide. I can only select one photo object at a time. Maybe if there were more than one on a single slide I could select all the ones on that one slide, but I can't select photos from more than one slide at a time. And the formatting actions can only affect selected photos.

Is PowerPoint just unstable in its formatting, or is there a command that was used accidentally that could be used again

Thanks.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

OK, I think I have all this set up the way you advise. Microsoft Office Document Image

Writer appears in my printers list in Settings; although it isn't a real printer, it's on
my computer and I assume it's a driver that will serve for the driver you advise.

It's fairly new, that one. Let's assume it's ok, but at the first sign of weirdness (like
you try to change a font and PPT spits nails at you) we're going to revise that assumption
pronto, 'kay?
other computer on our home wireless network.)

You can still install a driver for it on your own computer. And probably should, to keep
PPT happy.

But there are still a whole lot of clicks to get rid of that heavy black outline--the "no

line" option is 3 layers down in the dialog boxes--and my hand is getting mighty sore.

Try formatting one exactly the way you want it, then use the format paintbrush to apply the
formatting to other shapes. Doubleclick the paintbrush so it stays active and lets you
keep applying the same formatting over and over until you get bored and press ESC.

Clearly, since all the slides got set that way at once, there must be some command that

does them all, after they have been created. Even if said command was activated
accidentally. Do you know what that command might be?